


Lessons

by saellys



Category: Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Canon Compliant, Female Relationships, Gen, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Pre-Movie, headcanon-dump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2015-06-01
Packaged: 2018-04-02 07:50:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4052188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/saellys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Back then, Miss Giddy’s students would fidget in their seats. None of these five fidget, in spite of their many discomforts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lessons

There is no paper in the Citadel. 

When an Imperator goes raiding and acquires a scrap, a sheaf, sometimes even an entire precious book, Organic finds any relevant passages and inscribes them on Miss Giddy’s skin, in whichever blank spaces they can find. The paper is put into the fire that boils the Aqua Cola; there is no further use for it. 

What Miss Giddy carries on her body, she teaches to the Wives. Capable is the only one who has her letters. Of course she does--she always has to prove herself, and Miss Giddy made her copy the shaded alphabet that spans between her shoulderblades onto the chalkboard over and over, standing still and hunched in good afternoon light for hours at a time, day after day, until Capable could do it from memory, and then they began the real work.

Now if the seed of a lesson is in a place Miss Giddy can’t see, Capable reads it aloud, copies it to the board, reads it again, and Miss Giddy explains what it means while the others sit in their hard wooden chairs and listen. (Back _then_ , Miss Giddy’s students would fidget in their seats. None of these five fidget, in spite of their many discomforts.) 

Across her belly, Miss Giddy has a diagram of a foetus on the brink of crowning. This is copied onto the board and never erased. There are other things, in places less accessible, that Miss Giddy copies onto the board and sweeps away in haste when there is a sound at the door of the vault. There are things that aren’t on her body at all, which she only speaks to them: _Take heed lest thou become a Caesar indeed; lest the purple stain thy soul_. 

And: _Rain, rain O Zeus beloved, on the cornfields and plains of Attica.’--If we are to pray at all, let us pray like this, simply and freely_. Toast cannot imagine asking for rain, but Miss Giddy says that once, it was not poison. 

It is those passages that lead to an abstract of offices and power, of checks and balances, and to the word “triumvirate” spelled out for Capable to write on the board, and to Cheedo saying, only half-joking, “But there are six of us.” And Miss Giddy tells them the word for when there are six, and all of them flinch, and Miss Giddy tells them the word for when there are five, and the others look grateful but Cheedo frowns. 

Angharam, who carries everything Miss Giddy has ever told them inside herself, says, “We would check each other.” 

“Here?” says the Dag. Splendid nods, absently, far away in her thoughts. 

Miss Giddy presses a finger into the hollow of her right cheek, stretching the skin over the bone, and after a moment’s confusion as to whether she’s giving them the evil eye, Capable understands and leans close to read what’s etched there. “Who can make that s… straight, which he--hath?--made crooked.” 

Angharam stands and turns, walks very slowly away from them, taking deep breaths. 

\- - -

Toast, the smallest, stands on Angharam’s shoulders to reach the high south-facing hole and see whether they heard what they thought they heard. “It’s her,” she says, squinting through the spyglass. “One bike, loaded, no honor guard.” 

“How many times?” says Capable. 

“Eleven,” answers Toast, notching it on the flat spot by the hole where no one can see from the floor of the vault, “since we started counting.” And Toast has only been with them half a year. (She is the newest, Cheedo the youngest.) 

“Where does she go?” says the Dag. (She is the oldest.) 

“Why does she ever come back, more like.” (Splendid has been here longest.) 

“Food,” Toast says. She steps down into Angharam’s interlaced hands and, once she’s on the floor, doesn’t touch her again. “Water. Spare parts. Maybe she likes it here.” 

Angharam shakes her head. “She can survive out there. I’d never come back.” 

Miss Giddy sits at the piano with an oilcan full of something distilled in a vat halfway down the Citadel, and she is at that moment as her name implies. She pecks at the keys, in search of one that still sounds true. “Just let down your hair, girls,” she mutters, and then glances at Toast, and cackles. She wiggles her right arm at Capable, and Capable reads what’s there. 

“You godless child. What am I hearing from you? I thought I had removed you from the whole world, but you have deceived me nonetheless.” 

Capable meets Angharam’s eyes, and this time Angharam doesn’t turn away. 

\- - - 

There is no paper in the Citadel, so Capable writes on the broadest leaf Miss Giddy could pluck in the hydroponics chamber. She presses into the green flesh with one of Miss Giddy’s blunted ancient hairpins, bruises it in the shape of the letters she so stubbornly memorized. _When you go next, take us with you_. 

“There’s still room,” she says, and looks to Splendid. “What else can we say? Was she ever one of us?”

“Say… say please,” Angharam says. It’s been so long since she had a reason to use the word, a place where it might have some effect, it feels unfamiliar. “Please.” 

“Please,” Toast echoes, tasting it, and then the others do too, and for each voice that says it Capable writes it, plus once more for herself. 

It’s a week before Miss Giddy brings Furiosa’s answer: another leaf, blank, smaller than the one they sent her. New growth. They each touch it in turn. The Dag cries and presses her lips to it. (She’s missed her blood and all of them had their lessons about what that means.) 

It’s another week before Miss Giddy brings a bundle that contains a shotgun, an assortment of gloves and boots and goggles, and a tin of War Boy white paint, and she tells them it’s time to go to the Green Place. 


End file.
